Tuesday, 16 May 2023, London: at 8:15am we opened the doors to the Royal Institution to hold the first Ethics in Ecommerce Summit. As the leading eCommerce conference in business ethics, data privacy and human-centric technologies, the expectations were high.

Luckily, the weather was good, and the stage was set: we were all prepared and ready for the day. In the months previously, we had carefully selected all speakers and invited lots of people to gather a diverse audience of the eCommerce industry.

Fast-forward to 6:30pm: the team and I went to a nearby pub to celebrate the day. It was a huge success for everybody involved. We discussed with a very engaged and open-minded audience and listened to in-depth talks by experts from industry, academia and research. 

Let’s take a closer look at what happened… 

First of all, there was an unexpected wave of positive engagement and feedback from everyone involved. The input from the audience provoked  some great discussions and opened up lots of new and important aspects on a topic that not everyone has even been aware of. 

Here are some highlights of what we learned:

• On customer experience:

1. Find out what the customer wants, not what you want to sell.
2. Talk with the customer, not about them.
3. Prioritise privacy and security of customers.

• On data governance: bring the different stakeholders in a company together, so they are empowered to take action for the best ethical practices on every level.
• On search: enable intent-based search to give shoppers an enriched, privacy-first search experience.
• On personalisation with privacy: allow people to use systems anonymously.
• On the power of privacy: use privacy as a differentiator to stand out from the competition.
• On the tracking dilemma: businesses are faced with the question of exploration versus exploitation. How can you make the most of the data available without compromising your customer’s privacy?
• On business success: short-term goals will block you from driving purpose and succeeding in long-term profitable growth.
• On cookie banners: they often violate privacy and are designed to maximise ROI and disrespect customers. Systems need to be restructured to value the customer.
• On fashion sustainability:

1. How to engage customers better in your sustainability efforts?
2. Create a trust base to engage with them.
3. Be transparent.

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We were joined by delegates from The Ada Lovelace Institute, Holland & Barrett, Brunello Cucinelli, Sky, Artknit Studios, Crobox, Astound Commerce, Searchhub, Shell, Kingfisher, Decathlon, Tesco, Zeiss, Virgin and many others both as speakers and attendees. 

Please find pictures of the event here. We will add the videos shortly under Speakers.

How did you like it? We want to hear from you. Please use our survey to help us give you an even better experience next time.

Thank you to everyone who participated and see you at the next event! 

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